Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Anne Baxter

Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profiteth others and ourselves.

Devil | Duty | Idleness | Labor | Sin | Temptation | Wisdom | Temptation |

Thomas Binney

A right act strikes a chord that extends through the whole universe, touches all moral intelligence, visits every world, vibrates along its whole extent, and conveys its vibrations to the very bosom of God!

God | Intelligence | Right | Universe | Wisdom | World |

R. H. Blyth, fully Reginald Horace Blyth

To teach Zen means to unteach; to see life steadily and see it whole, the answer not being divided from the question; no parrying, dodging, countering, solving, changing the words; an activity which is a physical and spiritual unity with All-Activity.

Life | Life | Means | Question | Teach | Unity | Wisdom | Words | Zen |

Arnold Bennett, fully Enoch Thomas Arnold Bennett

You have to live on twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness - the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends! - depends on that!

Evolution | Health | Money | Pleasure | Respect | Right | Soul | Time | Wisdom | Happiness |

Clive Bell, fully Arthur Clive Heward Bell

Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means similar states of mind.

Aesthetic | Art | Ecstasy | Family | Means | Men | Mind | Religion | Wisdom | Art | Circumstance |

Andrew Brock, fully Andrew Clutton Brock

The universe is to be valued because there is truth in it and beauty in it; and we live to discover the truth and the beauty no less than to do what is right. Indeed, we can not attain to that state of mind in which we shall naturally do what is right unless we are aware of the truth and the beauty of the universe.

Beauty | Mind | Right | Truth | Universe | Wisdom | Beauty |

Johannes Brahms

Straight-away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration. Measure by measure the finished product is revealed to me when I am in those rare, inspired moods.

God | Ideas | Mind | Right | Wisdom |

Phillips Brooks

Bad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was means and made to do because he is still, in spite of it all, the child of God.

Day | Deeds | Desire | God | Life | Life | Man | Means | Soul | Thinking | Will | Wisdom | Deeds | Child |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Diseases are the penalties we pay for overindulgence, or for our neglect of the means of health... We live longer than our forefathers; but we suffer more, from a thousand artificial anxieties and cares. They fatigued only the muscles; we exhaust the finer strength of the nerves.

Health | Means | Neglect | Strength | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Genius in the poet, like the nomad of Arabia, ever a wanderer, still ever makes a home where the well or the palm-tree invites it to pitch the tent. Perpetually passing out of himself and his own positive circumstantial condition of being into other hearts and into other conditions, the poet obtains his knowledge of human life by transporting his own life into the lives of others.

Genius | Knowledge | Life | Life | Wisdom |

Leo Booth

Religious addiction is using God, the Church, or a belief system as an escape from reality, in an attempt to find or elevate a sense of self-worth or well-being... It is the ultimate form of co-dependency - feeling worthless in and of ourselves and looking outside for something or someone to tell us we are worthwhile... Recovery means discovering divinity in one's own life.

Addiction | Belief | Church | Divinity | God | Life | Life | Means | Reality | Self | Self-worth | Sense | System | Wisdom | Worth |

Gamaliel Bradford

There is no means by which men so powerfully elude their ignorance, disguise it from themselves and from others as by words.

Disguise | Ignorance | Means | Men | Wisdom | Words |

Gotthard Booth

Love means that the adults be genuinely concerned with the evolution of the true nature of the child. Children are not able to respond to a love which tries to fashion them according to the concept of the adult, no matter how good the latter's intention may be.

Children | Evolution | Good | Intention | Love | Means | Nature | Wisdom |

Elsie Landon Buck

Successful parenthood is built on three great principles which cut deep into the foundations of a structure, support and stimulate the right formation of habit in the building of life. They are love, discipline, and security. Without all these, a child's life is stunted from the very beginning.

Beginning | Discipline | Habit | Life | Life | Love | Principles | Right | Security | Wisdom |

Phillips Brooks

The best advisers, helpers and friends, always are not those who tell us how to act in special cases, but who give us, out of themselves, the ardent spirit and desire to act right, and leave us then, even through many blunders, to find out what our own form of right action is

Action | Desire | Right | Spirit | Wisdom |

Brown v. Board of Education NULL

Today education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

Awakening | Citizenship | Education | Good | Important | Life | Life | Opportunity | Public | Right | Service | Society | Training | Wisdom | Child |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

Providence is the very divine reason which arranges all things, and rests with the supreme disposer of all; while fate is that ordering which is a part of all changeable things, and by means of which Providence binds all things together in their own order. Providence embraces all things equally, however different they may be, even however infinite: when they are assigned to their own places, forms, and times, Fate sets them in an orderly motion; so that this development of the temporal order, unified in the intelligence of the mind of God, is Providence. The working of this unified development in time is called Fate. These are different, but the one hangs upon the other. For this order, which is ruled by Fate, emanates from the directness of Providence.

Fate | God | Intelligence | Means | Mind | Order | Providence | Reason | Time | Wisdom | Fate |